Twitter: litfuse

GRACE

(Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment) is a nonprofit organization made up of highly trained, experienced multidisciplinary professionals who seek to educate and empower the Christian community to identify, confront, and respond to the sin of child abuse.

Previous Campaigns

The Child Safeguarding Policy for Churches and Ministries (New Growth Press, August 2017)

Churches have always sought to be a safe haven for children and families, but many today are dealing with the tragic reality of child sexual abuse.

This handbook, authored and edited by a multidisciplinary team of child abuse experts, is designed for use by a group that will be formulating policies and procedures to protect children and deal with possible child abuse in their ministry, school, and/or church. Working through this book will assist churches and ministries to assess their current child abuse polices and then guide them through each step they need to take to address the safety of children under their care. It will cover vitally important topics including:

—Protecting the children in a Christian environment from child abuse
—The warning signs of child abuse
—Crafting and implement a child protection policy
—Responding to abuse allegations
—Caring for victims of child abuse
—The legal implications and requirements for churches and Christian ministries

Written by a GRACE team with multi-disciplinary knowledge, headed by Boz Tchividjian, a lawyer and former child abuse prosecutor, this handbook will be an invaluable resource to Christians who are seeking to educate themselves and others about child abuse and how to best protect the little ones under their care.

The Child Safeguarding Policy Guide for Churches and Ministries by Basyle Tchividjian and Shira M Berkovits is an unfortunate resource our churches and ministries need. This guide trains churches and ministries to protect from, prevent against, and rightly respond to child sexual abuse. I plan on encouraging our church to work through this timely guide and I challenge you to encourage your church or ministry to do the same!

Sadly, the world that we are currently living in and raising our children in has led to the need for this book. Church and ministries should be a safe haven and a place where everyone feels safe and protected, but that is no longer the case for many. The GRACE organization has does a great job with putting together this book for church leaders to refer to and be sure that there are policies in place to protect our children. Divided into 5 sections, this book contains a wealth of information.

Just thinking about this book having to be wrote is very sad to me. One, children are a gift from God. Two, churches are a place of safety. This is a very sad book to read but, I am very thankful for the authors taking the time to write it and help churches and ministries. It is much needed and to have it on hand is a blessing.

The care and comprehensive treatment of child protection laid out in this book floored me. Although protecting children from abuse is slowly being talked about more, it is still far from the norm. This policy guide is brave, bold, and needed.

In addition to the step by step plan to developing a church policy of protection and implementation in this guide (complete with worksheets and sample policy language), I appreciate the inclusion of chapters on ministering to and supporting abuse survivors. This is something sorely lacking in many churches too.

As Protestants, we tend to think of sex abuse cases as something that doesn’t happen to our people. But it does. To 20% of us. This book is an enormous help in learning to spot the signs and respond well. Every church should have this, read it carefully, and use it to form their own policy documents. Can’t recommend this book highly enough.

Having been in a church where child sexual abuse happened because the proper precautions were not in place, I know the need for good policy and adequate implementation. The organization behind this book wants to empower Christian communities to recognize, prevent, and respond to child abuse.
After the abuse in my church, we went through the long and difficult process of writing and implementing policy protecting children. I wish we’d had this book. It would have made the process easier and I think the result would have been a better document.

Because we understand the great responsibility of protecting our children and because of the unavoidable dangers in our world, The Child Safeguarding Policy Guide is needed, now more than ever. This well organized and detailed guide can be used alone or in conjunction with GRACE’s Child Safeguarding Certification. This book holds everything a church staff needs to understand the need, train volunteers, and implement policies that will help a church body protect and love children.

I first feel like it is terrible to even have to have books about this, however the subject is very real and the need to protect our children is high. Abuse is so common within the ministry system and many are either not prepared or have no idea, so this is a great resource to bring everything to light.

Every church and faith-based ministry needs to have this book in their library. It needs to be read and used so that our children and youth can be protected and members and guests can feel comfortable leaving their children in the care of ministry workers and volunteers.

The days when no one worried about leaving their child – infant, toddler, preschooler – in a church nursery or taking their older children and leaving them in a Sunday School class are forever gone.

When my children were small, we didn’t utilize the nursery but we kept our children with us in church – and they behaved. We did leave them in Sunday School classes and evening activities appropriate for their age. We trusted those with whom we entrusted our beloved children. That can not be taken today to be a certainty.